Scottish Autumn

A fabulous Etsy treasury created by Jo at BlackbirdAlleyShop. 
My Muckle bag looks great alongside these lovely Scottish-made items.

Brighten a gloomy day

My middle daughter decided her bedroom needed a bit of brightening up, especially since the weather has been so dismal lately. So, following a raid on my fabric stash, an attack with some pinking shears and a rare use of her sewing machine later, the bunting emerged. I think it looks fab.
(Apologies for the poor photography – poor light and a bit fuzzy. Oops.)

A woolly week

This week we have British Wool Week, the Campaign for Wool and Knitting Week. All a good excuse to celebrate wool and get out the needles.

In Edinburgh we are lucky to have several wool shops; a couple in large department stores and a few independents. Between them they make available a decent range of yarns, suitable for most projects and budgets. It is evident too that there is a growing range of British wools (clearly labelled as such) in each of these shops and even one that prides itself in stocking 'a wide range of unique Scottish yarns from small independent producers'.

A few years ago I was traveling with my family (somewhere up north but I can't remember where!) when we stumbled upon a small shop selling their own hand spun and dyed wools, produced from their own small flock and some of the farms around them. I was smitten and proceeded to buy a few skeins in different colours. It was such an enjoyable experience, to see where the wool came from, where it was processed and finally to use it to make something my family could wear (lots of socks).

On another note, I'm failing massively on posting things to my Etsy shop. My aim to have an item a day has hit the snag of poor weather, poor light and a general lack of being able to get decent photos. Tomorrow we are forecast for overcast and rain arriving late afternoon. Maybe we'll get a nice surprise instead.

October holiday blues

I hear people refer to the October break as 'half-term' and struggle with this alien term. In Scotland, especially the north-east, the name is the 'tattie-holidays'; the time of year when children were needed away from the school to help with the potato harvest. Hard work but people speak of it fondly (I suspect the memory has been softened with the passing of time).

So, the October break has arrived and with it cold and wet weather. Just as well my youngest is finding things to do . . .

She made it entirely on her own and I'm proud of her effort, even if a little put off by her design (two different colours of sponge, jam filling, chocolate icing, gummy bears around the outside and jelly tots on the top, spelling out her initials!).

Crochet hooks

Following my bout of RSI last year I have been trying to be careful not to add to the damage or cause aggravation. To do this I've had to severely limit the time I crochet (or type) and have invested in some new hooks designed to help avoid RSI/carpel tunnel in the first place!

My local yarn shops stock two different 'comfy' hooks so I tried out both.

The captions aren't mine but certainly give an impression

First of all I tried the soft touch Clover hooks. I have a couple of sizes of these and they feel quite nice for the thumb and forefinger. The dark pad is comfy to use and the tapering of the handle to the hook makes it comfortable in that area too. The only serious drawback is that they are quite short and sit inside the width of my hand, creating a bit of friction discomfort. A not so serious drawback is that I think the handles are pretty ugly!

Next up was the Prym soft handled hook. Again this was a good thickness for comfort around the thumb and hand but I found that, with a small hook size, the difference in thickness between the hook and the handle created a hard edge that my finger found irritating. I find that my forefinger sits quite far up the hook and is constantly on the metal part, thereby my hand doesn't get the full benefit of the thicker handle.

For larger size hooks the thickness of the handle is not such a big issue so I use these beautiful Brittany birch hooks and generally find them pretty comfortable to use. They are quite long, extending beyond the heel of my hand, which I like. I've not used the smaller sizes though so can't comment on the comfort of those.

Gifts for guys

I always struggle with gifts for the men in my life so have created an Etsy treasury to remind myself of some of the possibilities.

Coasters ahoy!

More coasters . . .

. . . purple this time.

These are also made of mercerised cotton although the yarn is a little thicker than the lilac one and I decided to go with the correct hook size and not make it tight.

This one is really straight-forward. It's just a ring of chain with trebles and then (tr, 3ch, tr) into each corner. I made my row start in the middle of a side to make the corner increases nice and simple and the corner increases are enough to keep the coaster nice and flat.